"LOOK into my eyes. You play for a team that are less than 30 years out of the non-leagues, attract tiny attendances, have just been promoted and should logically be relegated. Instead you will be second in the Barclays Premiership, above Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool. Now wake up, put your boots on and look at the league table in three months' time."

Wigan Athletic's extraordinary start to their first top-flight season has left their supporters dazed but they are only following the team in becoming entranced. Several players have tried hypnosis to boost their confidence in the face of overwhelming odds and, given their position on Chelsea's shoulders, they probably think they are still dreaming.

Marisa Peer has practised hypnosis on royalty, rock stars and actors but rarely can she have gained such job satisfaction as she has from getting into the minds of Jason Roberts, Leighton Baines, Alan Mahon, Lee McCulloch, Ryan Taylor, among others, since the start of last season. Of the ten or so she has worked with, most have played a part in securing promotion as well as taking the Premiership by storm.

"We've always done well after we've seen her," Roberts, who has scored winning goals against Sunderland and Newcastle United this season, said. "Things have been going well for us, and I'd like to think Marisa has been a part of it."

Peer puts positive thoughts into the players' minds when they are hypnotised. "You get into their subconscious and get them to believe great things," she said. "I have players go out on to the pitch with unshakeable conviction in their ability, because they have to have that. If they've ever scored an early goal, you keep rerunning what they did when they scored that early goal and saying that they are going to do exactly that same thing again."

Players do not require hypnosis frequently, Peer said. "They don't need to be hypnotised every week, not even every month, but if they have a key match."

She worked with some of the team the night before they beat Reading last May to clinch promotion and in August before they met Chelsea on the opening day of this season, when Wigan lost 1-0 but performed well above expectations.

"They had never had an opportunity of playing Chelsea or Manchester United before," she said. "They had no idea what that would be like. That first match against Chelsea was very good for them because although they didn't win they got such praise. One of the players wouldn't even let his parents come to the matches initially because he was so intimidated. Now they come and he's just fine."

As the resident hypnotist on Celebrity Fit Club, Peer even managed to coax the madcap Freddie Starr into semi-consciousness and she has little difficulty with footballers because their fondness for superstitions reduces the possibility of scepticism. "Players often have these odd beliefs," she said. "They are highly suggestible."

Roberts, 27, introduced Peer to his team-mates having seen her about twice a year since he was a 19-year-old playing for Hayes, a move he initiated after watching her coax his father to give up smoking. "I've done it so often that I'm under straight away," he said of the hypnosis.

"Since I've been seeing her my career has gone onwards and upwards and I'm now in the Premiership. The game is changing. It's a lot more to do with the mental side of it as well as the physical. You have to have belief in yourself."

Peer, though, admits it would be beyond her powers to instil more self-assurance into a certain football manager. "José Mourinho has an unshakeable self-belief, an inner confidence which is incredibly reassuring for his players. He radiates it and they pick up on it," she said.

Perhaps thanks in part to her, Wigan are proving the greatest challengers to his team.

TAKING A TRANCE

Wigan Athletic's record since Marisa Peer began hypnotising some of the team at the start of last season is remarkable. In the league they have played 56 matches,winning 32, drawing 13 and losing 11.